Author's Note: This was written for Faberry Week 2012, using the prompt Zombie Apocalypse. I do not own Glee or any of the characters herein. Well, technically, you could say that I do own Mrs. Fenty since she's merely a figment of my imagination, but she sucks, who wants her?
The title is also the title of a song and one of said song's lyrics is quoted, but I wouldn't classify this as a songfic.
Just a heads up in case you're easily offended, there is some strong language and gore. Now, here we go! This is my first Glee fic, I hope you like it! Let me know what you think!
***
It wasn't so scary as long as they had each other.
People had long spread the notion that love could get you through anything, and it was true- even the zombie apocalypse which could be, at times, even more frightening than anyone had ever imagined.
They had just arrived back home in Lima for the summer after their first year of college when it started. The virus spread like wildfire and by the time that would have been the start of their sophomore year, it was plain that there wouldn't be much of anything for either of them to go back to. In any case, public transportation had been abandoned by all- to utilize it would have been asking for it in several respects.
Quinn's mother had fled to go be with her older sister, Franny, and she could have accompanied her, but her place was with Rachel, and Rachel wanted to stay near her adoring dads. Quinn couldn't blame her; truth be told, she liked them better than her own parents, even after her mother had separated from her father; finally doing so didn't account for so many other things.
The fact that Quinn's mother's flight gave she and Rachel complete private access to what was once the Fabray family home certainly didn't hurt, either.
Their hopes and dreams for the future were dashed, but so were everybody else's, so they just tried not to think about it. The world at large was a horrific nightmare of a place, but their own little corner of it was as sound as ever.
Quinn Fabray found that as long as she had a firearm and her shining gold star to hold, to taste, and to completely adore, her life was still so much more than merely fine.
Rachel Berry had come to the glorious realization that, though she may not get to become the Broadway star she had always dreamed she would, she still had all the adulation she would ever truly need as long as she was the brightest star in the heavenly skies (and the heavenly eyes) of her beloved Quinn.
No amount of applause could compare to the peace she found curled up in bed, wrapped up from behind, clutched in Quinn's protective arms, tingling all over as Quinn buried her face in Rachel's soft, dark hair, breathing her in and sighing, "Baby," in that airy, golden honeysuckle voice of hers.
Besides, being the closest thing that now-wasteland they called Earth had to a true Broadway ingenue certainly sufficed.
And, until recently, they still had all of their family and friends, although that was changing now that the virus was quickly wiping Lima out as well.
They kept daily tabs on Rachel's dads and on Shelby, Beth, and Puck. Other than that, they didn't want to know who was dead, who was in hiding, and who was now a monster- at the rate things were going, it was just too much to think about- just so long as they had one another and the life they were building together.
***
Quinn was adding their just-finished brunch dishes to the sink when she felt Rachel's soft hands on her hips from behind.
One of Quinn's signature breathtaking smiles overtook her face as she turned her head to place a kiss onto the lush lips of her petite love.
"Quinn, I'm going to go spend some time in the back garden."
Judy Fabray's prized, sprawling gardens, winners of numerous lawn competitions (and, actually, previously tended by a hired woman named Rosa), had become Rachel's project and her sanctuary, the backyard garden, especially, flourishing more beautifully than ever before. Rachel and Quinn spent many an evening basking languidly in the private paradise the garden encompassed.
"Okay. Be careful." Quinn procured one of her father's many firearms from a cabinet, a small revolver. Guess the staunch, right wing old bastard had come in handy, after all. "Take this."
"Quinn-"
"I know you don't feel comfortable with them, but you've got to be prepared at all times these days."
"It's a secluded environment."
"And those bastards wander. I know we've never had one in the yard before, but still. Things are only getting worse. Just take it. Just in case. It'll make me feel better. Please?"
Rachel sighed and reluctantly took the weapon. "Fine. For you. Because I love you."
"Thank you, baby. I love you. Go enjoy the garden. Don't be too long, though. After I finish the dishes and a little cleaning up in here, I'm making a lavender bath. Candles, too. And some nice, classical music. I'd rather not enjoy all that alone."
Rachel grinned, widely and gorgeously, her flawless white teeth and glowing dark chocolate eyes lighting up the room like a marquee, filling the place with such life, more than one would even think could be contained in such a small girl.
God, Quinn adored her. Had a more lovable, passion-inciting human being ever existed?
"I'll be there," Rachel whispered against Quinn's lips. "And I'll sing for you. Something original. I'll make it up as I go along."
"Those are my favorite ones," Quinn whispered back.
Rachel smoothed Quinn's sunlit blonde locks away from her face and pressed a firm, intense kiss up to her lips. "You're my favorite one," she said before turning to exit through the door in the kitchen that led to the garage, leaving a beaming, tingling Quinn in her wake.
Quinn loaded all the dishes into the washer, started the process on the machine, and busied herself with various menial tasks in the kitchen, dining room and living area until she heard the machine shut off.
She looked out the kitchen window. Rachel was making her rounds, having finished watering and tending to everything, singing Castle On a Cloud from Les Mis.
Quinn smiled, her heart in her throat. How she treasured those moments in which Rachel, with all of her confidence, hadn't the slightest idea how magical she appeared to an onlooker.
No matter how intimate they had gotten or would ever get, Quinn would always, at times, find herself back in the role of mere onlooker when it came to Rachel Berry; she wouldn't have it any other way.
"To hell with putting the dishes back up," Quinn muttered. The dishes could wait. Setting up a bath to enjoy with her lady, however, couldn't; not any longer.
Quinn bouncily skipped upstairs to the master bedroom, still smiling at the fresh memory of Rachel singing in the garden. She began to run hot water in the large, circular bathtub, adding two generous heaping spoonfuls of the highly aromatic and moisturizing lavender bath salts her mother had liked to make, one of the few things she did completely by herself.
The bath salts fizzed in the hot water, causing Quinn to shiver in anticipation that she would soon be in the comfort and warmth of that water, holding Rachel, her hands passing over Rachel's skin, so silky in the water, soothing her muscles.
She lit many scented votive candles in shades of pastel purple and the purest, clearest white- lavender and gardenia.
Quinn hurriedly searched through various instrumental CD's, looking for the perfect one to score the sure-to-be-steamy scene that was soon to play out amidst all of the fragrant incandescence. She smiled as she selected a CD. That one, she thought. Now, just put it in, hit play, then you can call Rachel up and commence making love to the most incredible person you or anyone you can call to mind has ever laid eyes upon.
It was right as Quinn moved to place the CD in the stereo that she heard the shrill, piercing, bloodcurdling and utterly earth-shattering scream that caused her to allow the disc to drop to the ground, completely forgotten, as she practically flew to the window.
She threw the window open before she even looked to see what was going on.
When she did look, she was nearly paralyzed at the sight of Rachel pinned to the ground by one of those soulless, flesh eating parasites, its face in her neck.
"Baby! Hold on!" Quinn screamed out the window before rushing to the closet and retrieving a rifle, already ready to shoot; she had been long prepared for a moment in which she might have to do this.
She took position at the window, aimed, and fired a shot to the head that stilled the monster followed by another shot to the head and one more for good measure.
Quinn bounded out of the room, down the stairs, and out into the backyard. Adrenaline high, she flung the deadweight zombie corpse off of Rachel and knelt to the ground over the small, still body of her love.
"Rachel?" she asked, nearly gagging in horror at the sight of Rachel's throat torn completely open, chunks of flesh surrounding the fatally ripped area missing as well, and blood spilled everywhere. Rachel's mouth was stuck hanging wide open in a chilling expression of terror.
A sob caught in Quinn's throat as she ran her hand over the side of Rachel's frozen face, eyes still open disturbingly wide.
"Come on, baby, please...talk to me," she whispered in desperation, her tears falling onto the motionless body of the girl she loved more than anything.
It was no use, though, and deep down, she knew it. She might have killed that goddamned son of a bitch, but not before it had effectively destroyed her only anchor in the apocalyptic hell the world had become.
"No..." Quinn softly moaned through sobs that shook her whole body, collapsing against Rachel's still, breathless chest, burying her face there, tears and mascara staining the delicate pink of Rachel's cardigan as Quinn wept on, holding Rachel's lifeless body in her arms with all of the reverence with which one might regard a saint.
She reached over and took Rachel's limp hand, lacing her fingers with her own. Quinn squeezed her hand, kissed it, then sat up, taking in the body of her dead love.
"Where are you now?" she asked, completely lost but knowing fully well that there would be no answer.
Quinn gazed into Rachel's large, shell-shocked eyes, appearing black with fright as opposed to their usual warm, inspired, illuminated dark brown. She gently closed Rachel's eyelids with her fingertips, placing two gentle kisses over the thin, delicate skin there.
Next, she carefully and unobtrusively pushed Rachel's chin and jaw upward so that her mouth no longer hung agape.
There, that was better. If one ignored the fact that the skin of her throat hung in torn, spread flaps like two chapel doors thrown wide open, she looked as though she could have been peacefully sleeping.
Quinn leaned down and kissed Rachel's plump, pretty lips, still warm and soft.
"I love you, baby," she said, her voice strained, "and I know you're someplace where you're much better off than here," she whispered, tears drying on her face.
She looked up, her eyes catching sight of the dead zombie who had caused all of this.
A rage came over Quinn as fresh tears burned her eyes. She rose to her feet, let out a scream, and leapt into the air, landing with a stomping thud on the monster's chest, which caved beneath her weight.
She grabbed a shovel and was completely gone for minutes, beating every bit of her rage out onto the zombie corpse, battering it into something far more gruesome to behold than the creature had been even as it had attacked in its former undead state.
"Motherfucker!" Quinn screamed, stabbing at the zombie's neck with the shovel repeatedly until its head was completely severed.
She raised the shovel into the air to go about bludgeoning in the face when she heard the sound behind her.
It was menacing, guttural, and unmistakably inhuman.
Fuck, she thought. Another one?
Quinn whirled around, shovel in air, ready to wail on the intrusive undead bastard-
-and found herself face to face with Rachel.
But it wasn't Rachel.
Her skin, though not yet rotten like that of many zombies, was starting to grey and her eyes were cold and unintelligent, holding none of their old light, spice, or determination; holding nothing at all.
Still, however, Quinn was taken aback.
"Rachel?" she inquired.
The Rachel-creature only grunted in response, blinking.
"Rachel, baby, it's me," Quinn said, stepping closer, unable to keep away from the body of the girl she had once held, kissed, caressed, and loved like she hadn't even known she'd had the capability.
She leaned her face down toward Rachel's to kiss her, lips meeting hers-
-and Rachel bit a large, painful chunk of flesh from Quinn's bottom lip.
Quinn recoiled sharply in shock and pain, tasting blood.
"Rachel?" she queried again, more desperate than before.
Rachel's eyes narrowed and her mouth opened in a grotesque, wholly animalistic expression as she let out a bloodthirsty roar and lunged toward Quinn.
Quinn cried out and reflexively swung the shovel, knocking her attacker to the ground and running to the patio to grab the revolver she had made Rachel take outside with her a mere couple of hours ago.
Goddamn it, baby, she thought. If you'd only kept it with you...then you wouldn't be a fucking monster and I wouldn't have to take you out with it. How's that for irony?
The blow from the shovel had disoriented the Rachel-creature, but in no way was it down for the count. It was now on its feet, crazed and hungry eyes fixed on Quinn, ragged, gruff breaths coming from its bloody, ravaged throat as it slowly but determinedly shuffled across the garden toward its intended prey.
A painful lump formed in Quinn's throat, the metallic taste of her own blood in her mouth. She had the revolver ready to go, but she sure didn't want to fire it at the love of her life, even if that person no longer existed and what she saw before her eyes was merely a cannibalistic demon using Rachel's body as a shell in which to dwell; that shell had been the one Quinn had favored above any and all else.
"What did I do to deserve this?" Quinn whispered, her green eyes glistening with tears.
The cracks in Quinn's heart spread with every step her zombie love took toward her. She couldn't think of anything more tragic than the ragged, uncivilized, hideous sounds that came from the tattered throat that had once sang all of the right notes.
Gone forever was that beautiful voice that had gotten Rachel into NYADA, that had held so many people in its thrall, touched so many hearts and brought smiles to so many faces and tears to so many eyes. That voice that had always gotten her so much attention had, in the end, attracted the attention of the horrendous, grisly creature that would silence it for good. It was bad enough that Rachel would never have the career she had always dreamt of and that had been so within her grasp, but that now she would never even sing again? The entire world, small and ruined as it may be, had lost something truly magnificent; its brightest gold star had burned out.
In one final act of desperation, Quinn sang out the first lines of Taking Chances by Celine Dion, a song Rachel had always loved dearly and that hearing Rachel sing had always brought tears to Quinn's eyes.
Quinn's voice rang out through the garden like a morning (and mourning) songbird's call.
"Don't know much about your life..."
The Rachel-creature moved toward her still.
"Don't know much about your world, but..."
Rachel was in front of Quinn.
"Don't wanna be alone tonight on this planet...they...call...Earth..." Quinn finished, her voice fading hopelessly with every one of the final four words.
There was no recognition in the creature's eyes; Rachel Barbra Berry definitely dwelled nowhere within.
The creature screamed unintelligibly and lunged toward Quinn, who ran to the front yard, running from the reality of what her life had become and what she would have to do. Taking one of those fuckers out wasn't so easy when said fucker used to be your one true love.
In the openness of the front yard, the creature was livid, gaining momentum and more crazed than ever, roaring as Quinn continued to evade it.
"Quinn!" somebody shouted.
Quinn turned to see Mrs. Fenty, a lifelong neighbor and good friend of her parents since they were all young, parked in the road in front of the Fabrays' lawn.
Mrs. Fenty and Quinn's mother had both been members of the Ladies' Altar Society at their church, and her daughter, Andrea, had been a Cheerio and one of Quinn's so-called friends until word of Quinn's pregnancy had leaked.
Mrs. Fenty was her father's female counterpart in mercilessly judging others and tearing them down, and all throughout Quinn's life, she had witnessed her father and Mrs. Fenty viciously backstabbing everybody they knew after all of the adults had partaken in a bit too much to drink. She knew that her father and Mrs. Fenty had dated in college before each of them married others and it wouldn't have surprised her if they had, using alcohol as an excuse, had an affair behind their spouses' backs; in fact, she was sure of it- they were really the only people heartless enough for one another and deep, mutual appreciation of that had always shown between the two of them, particularly in states of inebriation.
Since Quinn had come back to the Fabray house and gotten into Yale, Mrs. Fenty had acted more civil toward her, but she knew that the woman was still just a cold, judgmental, sanctimonious, gossiping hypocrite of a woman, secretly blaming Quinn for the breakup of her parents' marriage, branding her a whore and now, surely, a lesbian- with the daughter of two openly gay men, no less! Quinn had known Mrs. Fenty her whole life and could just hear it.
"Quinn, dear, get in!" Mrs. Fenty exclaimed from the parked, still-running car. "I was on my way out and it is clearly not safe for you here!"
"No! I have to take care of her!" Quinn replied, her eyes never leaving the Rachel-creature.
"Quinn, she is a monster now, there is nothing you can do for her! Get in this car!"
God, this woman is fucking stupid, Quinn thought before exclaiming, "No, I mean I have to shoot her! She's not herself, she wouldn't have wanted to be like this! I can't let her potentially hurt anybody she cared about in life!"
Mrs. Fenty reached over and pulled a handgun from her glove box and cocked it. "Oh, for goodness sake, Quinn, let me shoot her and then get in the car!"
Quinn leapt protectively in front of the mocha-haired zombie that had once been the woman she loved. "No! I have to be the one to do it. I love her." I will do it for the right reasons; you would only do it in spite and haste, for the mere joy of playing God and killing somebody you've condemned.
"Quinn Fabray, I have known for some time that you are quite far from perfect, but have you really fallen so far? Claiming that you love a monster? Even before now, she has always been an abomination! She was a proud, Jewish show-off. Her people killed our Lord. She was created in sin and ugliness for the devil's purposes by two faggots and raised by those two faggots! You don't know what you're saying! You don't know what love is and there's no way that she ever could!" Mrs. Fenty finished, gesturing to Rachel, a disgusting edge of contempt in her voice on the word, "she."
Quinn was outraged and livid as she turned to face the car.
"You bitch! Fuck you, you fucking hag! You don't know what love is! You're a self righteous, two-faced cunt who hides behind your religion and uses it as an excuse to judge others and treat them like shit when you haven't got any room to look down on anyone! I know you're a closet drunk and I know that you and my father fucked behind my mother's and your husband's backs! You are an ignorant, vindictive, selfish, horrible and hypocritical cunt-whore and anyone with any sense at all knows it. And I know that you don't give a damn, you're just being pious so you can feel like you're being a good person, but you're really an uglier monster than any zombie that walks this earth. And are you fucking retarded? Jews are God's chosen people, it says so in the Bible! Jesus was a Jew! Judaism and Christianity go hand in hand, they're two sides of the same fucking coin! It was a Jew that paid the ultimate price for your sorry, non-chosen ass, saving you and all your cunt friends from the judgment and condemnation you deserve that you cast onto others, completely ignoring the guidelines of your own faith! What a fine and fucking faithful servant you have been to your Lord! What joy you must bring to His heart as a testament to His infinite love and mercy! Go fuck yourself, you-"
That was the last thing Quinn said before feeling the agonizing pain.
She had been so engrossed in shouting out long-repressed thoughts and words at Mrs. Fenty that momentarily forgotten that she had a rabid female zombie to relieve of her horrifying existence, a rabid female zombie who had just yanked Quinn's left arm out of its socket and was now ripping mouthfuls of her flesh away in chunks, cutting through to the muscle until, finally, the monster had severed the entire arm and fell contentedly to a seated position on the ground, hungrily biting at Quinn's severed arm the way a human would a chicken wing or drumstick.
Mrs. Fenty screamed and fired a shot that hit Quinn in the chest.
"I pray that you die quickly so that God's judgment will come down onto you all the sooner. You will burn in Hell with that Jew faggot child, Lucy Quinn Fabray," Mrs. Fenty said coldly before speeding away down the street.
Even if that is the case, which I highly doubt, Quinn thought as she staggered and eventually fell to the ground, it would be better than spending eternity in Heaven with assholes like you and my father, if that's what is to be found there; people like you are the real monsters. And I pray that my death is slow and painful, so that your prayer would remain forever unfulfilled.
Quinn was certain that death was coming to her, so painfully that she might have thought it couldn't come fast enough, had she not just prayed for it to come slowly.
Quinn Fabray still had one more thing to do before leaving this world.
She looked across from her at the pale, grey monster whom she had once called baby, hunched over in the grass, primitively gnawing at Quinn's very own left arm.
No, Rachel definitely wouldn't have wanted somebody who had known her and who had loved her to allow her to walk the world in such a state.
And, as of the previous evening, Beth, Shelby and Puck were still alive and well. To kill the zombie in front of her was to rid the world of one more monster that could potentially harm the beautiful, perfect child Quinn had bore.
Not to mention the pain and grief it would have caused Shelby to see the amazing daughter she had conceived, carried, bore and grown to love turned into a truly frightening, cannibalistic creature right out of a George A. Romero or Robert Rodriguez film.
Quinn had to spare Shelby that. In the end, Shelby Corcoran had turned out to mean the world to Quinn Fabray. She had given her the love of her life (and she reminded Quinn very much of an older Rachel) and she had made a fantastic, pampered life of love and devotion for the precious daughter for whom Quinn herself could not have properly cared.
Shelby knew what it was to be Quinn and Quinn knew what it was to be Shelby, so she had to do this one last thing for her as well as for Beth, for Rachel, for Rachel's wonderful, doting fathers, for anybody who had ever known and cared about Rachel and for everybody for whom Rachel had ever cared- which was basically everybody that she had ever talked to for more than one minute; underneath the perfectionism and desire to always be the best, Rachel had been such a kind, caring person; nobody knew that better than Quinn.
Quinn lifted the revolver, which was still prepared for the shot she hadn't fired in the garden. She was growing light-headed from all of the blood she was losing, but her right (and only remaining) arm remained steady by her sheer determination.
She squinted, lining up her shot, and squeezed the trigger.
The bullet caught the unsuspecting zombie right between the eyes, sending it onto its back with a light thud in the grass.
Quinn let the weapon fall softly into the grass, using her ever waning strength to pull herself across the ten feet that lay between herself and the again-lifeless body of Rachel Berry.
This time, Rachel looked peaceful by default, in spite of her skin's ashen tone.
Quinn's chest ached, her left arm socket throbbed, and her vision was fading in and out.
For one last time on this planet called Earth, Quinn Fabray kissed the full, curvaceous lips of Rachel Berry and lay down next to her, wrapping her body in her arm and burying her face in the long, thick, shining dark cocoa brown hair with the sweet scent she had breathed in so many times.
As Quinn lay dying, the last thing that had been said to her mere moments ago rang through her thoughts.
You will burn in Hell with that Jew faggot child, Lucy Quinn Fabray.
As Quinn's eyes closed and her breathing grew ever more shallow, she heard a sweet, glorious voice that was not of this earth, but that she knew quite well.
No, baby. She's wrong. You've lived through all of the hell you ever will. You will spend eternity in the hollow of God's loving hand, Lucy Quinn Fabray, and you will spend it with your friends, with your daughter, with your family, and with my family; with our family. Everything that we wanted from life that was torn away from us before we even got the chance to have it will be ours. You will spend eternity alongside the one who loves you, Rachel Barbra Berry, who can now say that she loves you more than afterlife itself, too. And that's a whole lot of love, baby.
Then, the voice said to Quinn the very last thing that it had before it was no longer one of this world.
You're my favorite one.
And with one final whispered, "I love you," Quinn Fabray left this world behind completely and forever.